Therapeutic Patient Procedures

Apheresis involves removing whole blood and separating it into components. An automated cell separator is used and allows one or more of the components to be removed while the rest of the blood components are returned to the donor or patient.

Therapeutic apheresis involves removing a specific blood component as part of a patient’s treatment. The DeGowin Blood Center performs several types of therapeutic apheresis procedures.

• Cellular depletions remove large amounts of disease related circulating cells to provide temporary clinical improvement. Leukemia patients who have high levels of white blood cells or patients with thrombocytosis who have high platelet levels may need this type of procedure.
•  Plasmapheresis is a procedure that removes large amounts of plasma and replaces it with another fluid. Often the substances removed are antibodies or immune complexes. Some illnesses treated with this procedure include thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), myasthenia gravis, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy, and guillain-barré syndrome.
• Red blood cell exchanges are performed to remove diseased red blood cells and replace them with healthy donor red blood cells. A patient with sickle cell crisis may need this treatment.
• Peripheral Blood Progenitor Cell collections are done to collect blood stem cells by apheresis prior to receiving high dose chemotherapy. Collecting these cells through the peripheral circulation versus a bone marrow harvest is less invasive and requires minimal recovery time. The patient is then transfused with these cells to restore bone marrow function after chemotherapy treatment. The DeGowin Blood Center also collects blood stem cells for the Iowa Marrow Donor Program and is one of 85 apheresis centers worldwide that collect blood stem cells for the National Marrow Donor Program.
• Photopheresis is a procedure that collects mononuclear white blood cells, treats them with psoralin, and exposes the cells to an ultraviolet light. Psoralin is a medication that causes the cells to be destroyed when they are exposed to the ultraviolet light. This procedure is used to treat cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, skin manifestations of chronic graft versus host disease, and a variety of immune mediated inflammatory diseases.